Burner wall and nose construction for industrial furnaces



July 18, 1967 w. SUYDAM 3,331,595

BURNER WALL AND NOSE CONSTRUCTION FOR INDUSTRIAL FURNACE'S Filed July 2s. 1965 2 sheets-sheet 1 INVENTOR.

F i g. l WALTER SUYDAM.

BY ,fa/walqa.. a(

ATTORNEYS.

July 18, 1967 w. SUYDAM 3,331,596

BURNER WALL AND NOSE CONSTRUCTION FOR INDUSTRIAL FURNACES Filed July 28, 1965 2 Sheets-Sheet f- INVENTOR. WALTER SUYDAM.

ATTORNEYS.

wym Mm( y United States Patent 3,331,596 BURNER WALL AND NOSE CONSTRUCTION FOR INDUSTRIAL FURNACES Walter Suydam, Mount Lebanon Township, Allegheny County, Pa., assignor to Loftus Engineering Corporation, Pittsburgh, Pa., a corporation of Maryland Filed July 28, 1965, Ser. No. 475,516 6 Claims. (Cl. 266-5) My invention relates to industrial furnaces, such as soaking pits and continuous or pusher-type furnaces, wellknown in the art for heating metal, typically steel, ingots, billets, blooms, slabs, and the like.

Furnaces of the sort in mind comprise a heating chamber within a body of refractories externally reinforced and supported by a binding of structural steel and steel plate. The furnace structure includes one or more burners for directing fluid fuel and combustion :air into the heating chamber, and one or more waste gas passages for leading the hot combustion products from the heating chamber to a ue.

In certain designs `of industrial furnaces the one or more burners open into the heating chamber through a burner wall portion, and below the burner wall portion a passage is provided for the flow of the hot combustion products to the furnace flue. The top or roof of said passage includes a so-called nose of refractory material located beneath the burner wall portion. A lintel of steel is supported by the structural steel binding of the furnace, and this lintel not only provides vertical support for the heavy burner wall portion above it, but additionally provides a support for the suspended nose of refractory material. Under the prolonged effects of furnace heat and the weights of the burner wall portion and the refractory nose, the lintel sags and becomes distorted to an extent that both the burner wall portion and the nose must be replaced at great cost and loss of furnace production. It is to furnaces of the design referred to in this paragraph that my invention is particularly directed.

It is the object of this invention to minimize or eliminate this costly incident of furnace operation and maintenance, and to make provision whereby either the burner wall portion or the refractory nose can be replaced independently of the other. Within the scope of this object my invention consists in the particularly effective combination of water cooling and supporting structures, in consequence of which the refractory nose of the furnace may be supported independently of the burner wall portion.

The invention will be described as it may be embodied in soaking pits, a type of industrial furnace used for heating metal ingots and slabs.

In the accompanying drawings,

FIG. 1 is a fragmentary view, showing in vertical section an end wall of a soaking pit, in which a burner wall portion and a waste gas port or passage are incorporated;

FIG. 2 is a view in elevation of the external structural steel binding associated with such end wall, together with the supports for the burner wall portion and the refractory nose in the top or roof of the waste gas passage; and

FIG. 3 is a fragmentary view in vertical section, showing certain details of construction on the plane III-III of FIG. 2.

Referring to FIG. 1 of the drawings, the body of the soaking pit comprises an end wall, generally indicated at 2. The pit body has an opposite end wall (not appearing in the drawing), two opposing side walls (only one of which appears at 3) and a hearth 4, all essentially constructed of refractory material to form a heating chamber C for the ingots or other articles. A cover (not shown) is removably supported over the end and side walls of the soaking pit, to close the heating chamber during the 3,331,596 Patented July 18, 1967 heating and soaking cycles of pit operation, and such cover is removable to permit withdrawal of the ingots when they are ready for rolling or forging.

The wall 2 of the pit comprises a wall portion 5 including ports 6, two ports in this case, as indicated in FIG. 2. With each port a burner 7 is arranged to deliver fluid fuel and combustion air to fire the heating chamber C. Below the burner a waste gas port or passage 8 opens, to lead the hot products of combustion from heating chamber C into a flue 9. The refractory roof 10 of passage 8 includes a rounded nose portion 11 that curves upwardly from said roof and merges with a vertical wall portion 12.

A steel lintel 13, in the form of a hollow beam, is constructed of two I-beams 14 welded in water-tight seams along the meeting edges 15 of their flanges, shown in FIG. 1. Steel plates 16 (FIG. 2) are welded over the ends of the I-beams 14, to form a water-tight enclosure within the lintel, into which water inlets 17 enter and from which water outlets 18 open, whereby with suitable piping a circulation of cooling water may be maintained within the body of the lintel.

The structural steel binding for the end wall 2 of the soaking pit appears in elevation in FIG. 2, and in this binding two steel channel sections 19, with their anges arranged toe down, are rigidly supported, each by a steel I-beam buckstay 20 and steel struts 21 and 22. The channels 19 provide seats upon which the lintel 13 is securely supported at its two ends. A rigid steel strut 23 may be provided in the steel binding adjacent to each end of the lintel, and the ends of the lintel may be bolted to struts 23 in such way as to prevent lateral movement of the lintel from seated position, and to permit such vertical movement of the lintel as may be required to insure secure seating of the lintel on members 19.

The passage 8 advantageously extends throughout the width of the heating chamber C, and the nose 11 is formed of the required number of courses of inverse arch blocks 24 of refractory material. For each of the laterally successive courses of blocks 24 a steel hanger member 25 (FIG. l) is attached to outer bottom flanges 26 and 27 of the lintel 13, shown in FIG. l and FIG. 3, and metal hanger clips 28 engage the blocks to the hanger member 25. Thus, by means of a series of hanger members 25 juxtapositioned along the elongate lintel 13, together with the hanger clips 28, each of the inverse arch blocks 24 is supported by or suspended from the lintel 13. The refractory blocks that form the vertical wall portion 12 may be tied to the lintel 13 by means of clips 29 secured to plate members 30 carried by the lintel, as indicated in FIG. 1. The Various means for tying and suspending refractory blocks to a supporting beam or lintel are well-known in the ait, land further description of them is deemed unnecessary to an understanding of my invention.

The means for supporting the refractories of burner wall portion 5 without placing the weight of its refractories and burners on the lintel 13 comprise a girder-like steel structure formed of a horizontal steel channel 31 arranged with its flanges directed upwardly, together with vertical steel struts 32 and 33 which are united, as by welding, at their lower ends to beam 31 and at their upper ends to a steel I-beam 34 that extends along the top edge of end wall 2 and forms an important component of the structural steel binding of the furnace.

This girder-like structure is supported on the Vertical struts 23; that is, the channel beam 31 of the girder structure is secured in seated position on the tops of the struts 23. The beam 34 of the girder structure is rigidly secured at its ends to the I-beams (34) that extend along the opposite side walls of the soaking pit. Indeed, such I-beams form a continuous steel unit around the periphery of the four refractory walls of the soaking pit body.

At the bottom of the girder structure toe elements, in the form of steel channel sections 35, are welded to the bottom of beam 31, and these sections extend laterally from such beam, as shown in FIGS. l and 3, and provide in effect a platform 36 upon which the refractory burner wall portion is built and vertically supported. As shown in FIGS. 2 and 3, vertical bolts 37 tie beam 31 of the girder structure to the lintel 13 to prevent relative lateral displacement of the beam and the lintel, but it is important to note that these bolts in no way cause the weight of refractories borne by the girder to be imposed upon the lintel 13. Thus, the support for the refractory nose 11 is independent of the support for the burner wall portion, the important feature being that no substantial amount of the weight of the burner wall portion S is imposed upon the nose-supporting lintel 13. Due to this feature the lintel 13 can be precisely designed for the minimum allowable deflection under the independent weight of the refractory blocks supported thereby. Indeed, due to the organization of the bolts 37, the girder structure that supports the burner wall portion may assist the lintel 13 in supporting the nose refractories 12 and 24. By virtue of my improvements, either the burner wall portion 5 or the nose 11 may be rebuilt independently of the other.

It may be noted that the features of my present invention may be used in the well-known burner wall portions and noses between the top firing zones of continuous or pusher type furnaces. This is held in contemplation within the definitions of certain of the appended claims, as well as such structural variations and modifications as will occur to the artisan or engineer.

I claim:

1. An industrial furnace having a heating chamber within walls of refractory material, a binding of structural steel for said walls, a burner wall portion of refractory material including a burner port, a burner arranged to deliver fluid fuel and combustion air through said port into heating chamber, a flue for the combustion products, a passage beneath said burner wall portion for the flow of combustion products to said flue, the roof of said passage including a refractory nose, an elongate lintel in the form of a hollow steel beam of welded construction supported at its opposite ends by members of the structural steel binding, said lintel including an inlet and an outlet for the circulation of cooling water through its hollow body, means cooperating with said lintel for the suspended support of said refractory nose, and a steel girder-like structure integrated with said steel binding for the support of said burner wall portion with substantially none of the weight thereof imposed on said nose-supporting lintel.

2. An industrial furnace having a heating chamber within walls of refractory material, a binding of structural steel for said walls, a burner wall portion of refractory material including a burner port, a burner arranged to deliver fluid fuel and combustion air through said port into heating chamber, a flue for the combustion products, a passage beneath said burner wall portion for the flow of combustion products to said flue, the roof of said passage including a refractory nose, an elongate water-cooled lintel supported at its opposite ends by members of said structural steel binding, means cooperating with said lintel for the suspended support of said refractory nose, and a steel girder-like structure integrated with said steel binding for the support of said burner wall portion with substantially none of the weight thereof imposed on said nosesupporting lintel.

3. An industrial furnace having a heating chamber within walls of refractories, a binding of structural steel for said walls, the furnace structure including a burner wall portion of refractory material, a passage beneath said wall portion for the ow of combustion products from the heating chamber, the top of said passage including a refractory nose, an elongate lintel in the form of a hollow steel beam supported at its opposite ends by members of the structural steel binding, said lintel including an inlet and an outlet for the circulation of cooling water through its hollow body, means cooperating with said lintel for the suspended support of said refractory nose, and a steel girder-like structure integrated with said steel binding, said girder-like structure having laterally extending toe elements for vertically supporting said burner wall portion substantially independently of said nose-supporting lintel.

4. A soaking pit having a heating chamber with walls constructed of refractory material reinforced with a binding of structural steel, at least one of said walls comprising a burner wall portion, a passage opening through the wall below said burner wall portion for the flow of hot combustion products from the heating chamber, the top of said passage includingr a refractory nose, an elongate water-cooled lintel supported at its opposite ends by members of the structural steel binding, means cooperating with said lintel for the suspended support of said refractory nose, and a steel girder-like structure integrated with said steel binding for the support of said burner wall portion substantially independently of said nose-supporting lintel.

5. A soaking pit having a heating chamber with walls constructed of refractory material reinforced with a binding of structural steel, at least one of said Walls comprising a burner wall portion, a passage opening through the wall below said burner wall portion for the flow of hot combustion products from the heating chamber, the top of said passage including a refractory nose, an elongate lintel in the form of a hollow steel beam supported at its opposite ends by members of the structural steel binding, said lintel including an inlet and an outlet for the circulation of cooling water through its hollow body, means cooperating with said lintel for the suspended support of said refractory nose, and a steel girder-like structure integrated with said structural steel binding, said girder-like structure having laterally extending toe elements for vertically supporting said burner wall portion substantially independently of said nose-supporting lintel.

6. An industrial furnace having a heating chamber within walls of refractories, a binding of structural steel for said walls, the furnace structure including a burner wall portion of refractory material, a passage beneath said wall portion for the flow of combustion products from the heating chamber, the top of said passage including a refractory nose, an elongate metal lintel supported at its opposite ends by members of the structural steel binding, means cooperating with said lintel for the suspended support of said refractory nose, and a steel girder-like structure integrated with said steel binding, said girder-like structure having laterally extending toe elements for vertically supporting said burner wall portion substantially independently of said nose-supporting lintel.

References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS 1,469,206 10/1923 Anthony. 1,696,805 12/1928 Lehr. 2,511,676 6/1950 Morton 263-43 2,839,290 6/1958 Bloom 266-5 3,100,811 6/1963 Bloom 266-5 FOREIGN PATENTS 928,484 6/ 1955 Germany. 632,120 11/ 1949 Great Britain.

I. SPENCER OVERHOLSER, Primary Examiner. R. S. ANNEAR, Assistant Examiner. 

1. AN INDUSTRIAL FURNACE HAVING A HEATING CHAMBER WITHIN WALLS OF REFRACTORY MATERIAL, A BINDING OF STRUCTURAL STEEL FOR SAID WALLS, A BURNER WALL PORTION OF REFRACTORY MATERIAL INCLUDING A BURNER PORT, A BURNER ARRANGED TO DELIVER FLUID FUEL AND COMBUSTION AIR THROUGH SAID PORT INTO HEATING CHAMBER, A FLUE FOR THE COMBUSTION PRODUCTS, A PASSAGE BENEATH SAID BURNER WALL PORTION FOR THE FLOW OF COMBUSTION PRODUCTS TO SAID FLUE, THE ROOF OF SAID PASSAGE INCLUDING A REFRACTORY NOSE, AN ELONGATE LINTEL IN THE FORM OF A HOLLOW STEEL BEAM OF WELDED CONSTRUCTION SUPPORTED AT ITS OPPOSITE ENDS BY MEMBERS OF THE STRUCTURAL STEEL BINDING, SAID LINTEL INCLUDING AN INLET AND AN OUTLET FOR THE CIRCULATION OF COOLING WATER THROUGH ITS HOLLOW BODY, MEANS COOPERATING WITH SAID LINTEL FOR THE SUSPENDED SUPPORT OF SAID REFRACTORY NOSE, AND A STEEL GIRDER-LIKE STRUCTURE INTEGRATED WITH SAID STEEL BINDING FOR THE SUPPORT OF SAID BURNER WALL PORTION WITH SUBSTANTIALLY NONE OF THE WEIGHT THEREOF IMPOSED ON SAID NOSE-SUPPORTING LINTEL. 